Vitiligo (Iron Legion)
"Truly blooming health does not rest content within its due bounds; for disease ever presses close against it, its neighbor with a common wall." Nosos Virus Symptoms: * Blindness * Migraines * Leucism How I was brought into the world is lost to the times. I do not remember my father nor my mother, I remember no warmth, no mother's embrace, no gentle voice to sooth my slumber. I remember only the violence. I remember the snow, and the flurry, and around it all the howling noise; of the wind, and of the dragons. I remember the blood soaking into the snow, and the frosty southern storms that chilled those lifeless corpses to the bone. How did I get here? Perhaps there was a nesting mother, who for whatever reason had managed to spare her children from the slaughter? Perhaps a well-intentioned stranger, had hosted and raised this clutch as their own? Whatever the case, they're gone now. There is only me. A blind daughter. An orphan with only the sleet-covered plains to call mother. I am a creature of death and snow. Darkness and frost. My feathers inked with the pale white snow and the blood-soaked souls. Unlike fire, ice is eternal. It does not burn out, nor wither, nor fade. It alone stands in defiance. Silent. Strong. Vast expanses of cold, empty fields would be the final fate of all these worlds, every one. The battles for dominance only delays this inevitable fate. Time is the one true winner, and with time, ice. Life can only cling desperately to this precipice. I remember what it was like to see. I remember the light, slowly fading as though that fateful dawn, creeping away until there was only the empty void. My crystal white eyes turning as pale as the snow from which I was grown. Slowly. My world encased by a blanket of darkness. But don't be fooled, my magic shines as bright as it always has, and my feathers pick up the slightest whispers of breeze. Yes, I can feel your breath as easily as you can feel the cold winter winds. I cannot see you, and yet, here you are. Where did I disappear off to this morning? I carry more than blindness. Sometimes I live with headaches so strong it is as if I could see again, my dark world replaced by bright, agonising flashes of colour. It's all I can do to find the still and the silent, to sooth the pain. I was born in violence. Though I may not remember, my soul screams out still. I do not need your pity. The time for that has long passed. Where were you when I was young and alone, a stranger in a strange land? The South is a cold and hard place, and it breeds cold and hard dragons. So desperately do they cling to their sliver of life. I was sickly, I was weak. No matter how hard I fought, there was no place for me there. You find it ironic I say that, now in the plaguelands? Well... perhaps, but plague dragons respect drive most of all, a determination to succeed, no matter how hard. And though I might be lacking in many things, grit is not one of them. I'm still alive, aren't I? My new clanmates, they don't see anything wrong with the South. They seem to respect the ruthlessness and brutality that had goaded me like a whip my whole life. "Building character", they call it. But I would never leave any hatchling to the fate they left me. Never. No child of mine will grow with only the snow and the darkness for company, alone on the snowbanks to fight for their lives. If nothing else in this life, they would know love. And perhaps, so will I. "Vitiligo is always twitching and grazing everything around her. I can't imagine living blind, she must be so strong, to have survived this long. But now that she's in a Clan, she won't have to take on everything by herself anymore. The plaguelands are harsh even to its own denizens, us ice-flighters have to stick together." - Brume